Why mourn loss of car industry, when we can’t even make our own bikes?

My government subsidises car manufacturing, here in Australia. If ever we are “isolated” (that is, too poor to buy cars from overseas), at least we will have the skills here, to build our own piece of crap cars. Put my name on the list for a Zaporozhets! Thus runs the argument for propping up local car making. We have to brace for a bleak future. But surely, if ever we can’t afford foreign cars, we will likewise have issues with fuel? We will have exported all of our coal, gas and uranium, and be desperately trying to teach ourselves how to hunt kangaroos.

Toyota employees leave work for the last time

Toyota has closed its Altona plant in Melbourne. The 350 employees, whose wages we have been subsidising with our tax money, so they might make us all Zaporozhets when we have nothing to fuel them, have sadly been made redundant. Can’t they be given government jobs making things we might actually have more of a need for, if and when this country does fall to its knees? How about a publicly owned bicycle factory? All we have here are a handful of custom frame makers. We lack the skills and equipment to make any sort of bike component, either gears, brakes or tires. These are items of transport technology, we would be more likely to need, if we were ever left to fend for ourselves. I would happily see my tax pay their wages, if they were working for Trisled